Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi canceled an appearance in New Delhi, March 3.

Sajjad Hussain/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Narendra Modi, the front runner to become India’s next prime minister, canceled an appearance in Delhi Monday evening at which he would have fielded questions from audience members and Facebook users in a live, televised town-hall meeting.

No reason was given for the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate’s cancellation. Mr. Modi’s spokesman didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Modi has never been gun shy about using social media. The Gujarat chief minister was early among Indian politicians to have a website, and today he has the most Twitter followers—3.47 million—of any Indian politico. Mr. Modi blogs regularly, sometimes emotionally. Besides Twitter, he is also on Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Flickr, Tumblr and StumbleUpon.

But the modern Mr. Modi has had a checkered relationship with live television. At Monday’s event, which was to be broadcast live on NDTV and live-streamed on Facebook, the candidate would have been interviewed by journalist Madhu Trehan, with the opportunity for additional questions from the audience and Facebook users.

“This was an ideal situation for Narendra Modi to connect with fence-sitters, to engage with concerned citizens and the most important group in this election—the youth,” said Ms. Trehan in an email. “It is ominous for freedom of speech in India if politicians will only give speeches in a controlled environment.”

Abhinandan Sekhri—a founding partner of the website Newslaundry, which organized the 48-minute-long event with Facebook and NDTV—said in an email that none of the questions that Ms. Trehan or the audience would have asked Monday had been sent to Mr. Modi or his office for pre-approval.

The Facebook Talks Live team made a shortlist from the “several thousand” questions from Facebook users, he said. Those among the 150 or so live audience members who wished to ask questions were told to request a slot, but they were not required to share their questions with the event’s organizers.

“There has been an outpouring of curiosity and expectation but also anger and aggression online since this series was announced,” Mr. Sekhri said.

The rest of the “Facebook Talks” series is set to proceed as scheduled this week, featuring interviews with Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav.

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